


Twenty One

by Venstar



Series: Meaningless Scars [21]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Last Unicorn Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15381921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venstar/pseuds/Venstar
Summary: At the word changed, James drew in on himself, a hand touched his knee and then his forehead again, perhaps hoping that the changes had gone away.  He drew his hand away, disappointed.





	Twenty One

James tried to get his four legs under him, but his body wasn’t listening to him. His balance was off and stand, he stumbled, nearly falling out of M’s grasp. She balanced him once more within the firm circle of her arms. His forefeet hit the ground trying to find purchase, except the ground felt odd beneath his hooves, it pushed through parts of his hooves, had he suffered more damage than he thought? He became distracted from his questions when he saw that there was another hand on the ground, one that didn't belong to M or to Q. It was was broad, with blunt fingers, short nails with dirt underneath them. Confused, he followed it, searching for it’s owner and met M’s wide-eyed look of horror. “Oh, I’m sorry,” M said, “Nooo, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, please forgive us, oh please forgive us.”

M’s horror soon became mirrored on James’s own face, when he looked down the length of his body, which should have been what it had always been before, except now, there were human legs and arms, HANDS! Hands that were no longer hooves. He moved one of his shaky new arms to press against where he thought the center of his forehead was and kept moving his hand, searching, searching, but his horn was GONE! He pressed his hand flat against his forehead, new fingers curling over his forehead into short cropped hair. James gasped and bent over, collapsing back to the ground. He tried to run then, he truly did, but his body didn’t know what to do without it’s four legs and long neck.

“I can feel this body DYING around me!” He cried. Distraught, he had lost all of his brother’s and sisters, only himself remaining and now...he was lost, gone, no longer a unicorn. What was he now? Mortal and more vulnerable than he had ever been, on four delicate legs.

“What have you done! What have you done!” M yelled at Q, as she cradled James’s huddled form to her. 

Q twisted up his face and pushed his too large sleeves back and dared to argue with her, “The magic chose the shape, not I. I am a bearer, I am a dwelling, I am a messenger…” He was interrupted by M again. 

“You are an idiot!” M yelled. She picked a rock up and chucked it at him. “You fool! I told you within this way lies madness and yet you took it, you took it and look, look at what you did! What is he now, but lost!”

“I’m a wizard, a tinkerer, a fixer of things, not an idiot! The red bull came and I solved the problem, the magic chose the shape, not I, he’s safer as a human!” Q stared at M in exasperation. He pushed his glasses up. “I’m a wizard, I used my magic to save us and this is the choice it made!” 

“This is not a solution!” M hissed, “What do you mean the magic chose? Magic would NEVER choose this for him, not for a unicorn. Oh no no no, oh I’m so sorry.” M brushed James’s hair back. “You have trapped him in human form, he’ll die, he’ll go mad! What were you thinking!” 

“It’s only temporary,” Q waved his hands around in the air. “Temporary, as soon as we solve the problem of the red bull, he’ll revert back to his true shape.”

“Are you sure?” M asked, she hugged James tighter to her.

Q grimaced quickly. Magic was tricky even during it’s intended use and this unfortunately, he admitted to himself, was NOT something he had intended. He had only wanted to save James from the Red Bull and it probably wasn’t the best of ideas to have added on MAGIC DO AS YOU WILL at the end of his spell, because he didn’t actually know what the magic had added or put into his spell, so to reverse it what was he supposed to do? How would the spell know when to end?

“Q…” M’s voice ground out as his hesitation to answer her grew longer. 

James chose that moment to finally speak. “Where am I? What am I?” His voice was muffled as he spoke into M’s arms.

M and Q bent to look into James’s face, his eyes, unchanged from when he was a unicorn, a clear, crystalline blue that was emphasized in his human form, a scar where his horn had once been. Eyes that had once been full of naive hope, joy and wanderlust, were now full of a desperate emotion to escape. Q finally regretted his actions. “I’m sorry.” He blurted out, “I’m so sorry. The red bull. It came for you, you couldn’t fight it and I...I...helped.”

“You meddled.” M said, glaring at Q. 

“I didn’t see you helping!” Q yelled, but this only agitated James more, he curled up tighter. Q let out a soft sound and untied the heavy, patchworked cloak from his shoulders and swung it around James’s broad shoulders. He smoothed the edges and tied it securely in the front. “It’s only temporary.” Q murmured softly, his heart clenched to the size of a walnut at the look James bestowed upon it, full of hope and despair.

“Truly?” James asked, his voice odd and new.

“He doesn’t know that.” M snapped out. “Don’t promise things you can’t keep!”

“I did it once, I can do it again, we just need to give it time.” Q said, he brushed his fingers across James’s short blond hair. “Give it time. It’ll be easier to approach the castle and avoid the red bull this way, you see how he ignored you once you were human. In fact, it ignored both M and myself, he went after you directly, but then stopped, once you changed.”

At the word changed, James drew in on himself, a hand touched his knee and then his forehead again, perhaps hoping that the changes had gone away. He drew his hand away, disappointed.

M let out a huff and loosened her arms, as James tried to rise on shaky legs. “That’s true.” She agreed grudgingly. 

“I can not stay in this body for long.” James whispered, “It’s dying, changing all the time, I feel it.”

Q murmured into the air between them. “The inevitability of time.”

James continued on. “If it changes too much, I’ll be lost.”

Q straightened his shoulders. “Then we’d best be quick about finding the other unicorns. To the castle, while it’s still light. Come on M, help me with him, stick together and we’ll be able to do this.”


End file.
